Ayumi Ishito Brings an Adventurous, Outside-the-Box Trio to Chinatown

Even in communities that support the arts, jazz musicians often get pushed to the fringes. The last two years’ insanity in New York has exponentially increased that marginalization for artists in general. Tenor saxophonist Ayumi Ishito has been one of the more resourceful players in town: she was one of the first to resume performing during the brief window of opportunity in the summer of 2021, and she’s maintained a steady schedule in recent months playing a lot of out-of-the-way venues as restrictions have been dropped. Her next gig dovetails with both her adventurous improvisational sensibility and her most recent album as a leader. She’s opening a twinbill on April 26 at 6:30 PM at Downtown Music Gallery with soundscaper Damien Olson and Nebula and the Velvet Queen on theremin. They’re followed by a second trio with Aaron Edgcomb on percussion, Priya Carlberg on vocals and David Leon on sax. It’s a pass-the-bucket situation.

Ayumi Ishito & the Spacemen Vol. 1 is streaming at Bandcamp. It’s her most experimentally ambitious release to date, a mix of trippy electroacoustic pieces featuring Theo Woodward on keys and vocals, Nebula and the Velvet Queen on theremin. Jake Strauss doubling on guitar and bass and Steven Bartashev on drums.

Squiggles quickly give way to a collective shimmer and fragmentary acoustic and electric guitar riffs as the first number, Looking Through Ice drifts along, Woodward adding Indian inflections with his vocalese. Beyond the guitar and vocals, it’s hard to distinguish the rest of the instruments – Ishito using her pedalboard here – until Strauss introduces a gently swaying, Grateful Dead-like theme and Bartashev picks up the clave with his echoey tumbles.

Shifting sheets, dopplers and warpy textures drift through the mix in the second track, Hum Infinite. Strauss finds a center and builds around it, on bass; Ishito’s wry, dry bursts evoke a EWI. The group slowly reach toward an organ soul tune, then back away as Ishito emerges acerbically from behind the liquid crystal sheen.

Track three, Misspoke is irresistibly funny, Ishito and Woodward chewing the scenery, impersonating instruments real and imagined. Strauss’ blippy bass and Bartashev’s tightly staggered drumming propel Folly to the Fullest to tongue-in-cheek hints of a boudoir soul tune, Ishito floating overhead,

Night Chant is an entertaining contrast in starry, woozy electronic textures and goofy wah-wah phrasing from Ishito: stoner electro-jazz as fully concretized as it gets. The final cut, Constellation Ceiling, is a launching pad for Ishito’s most amusing indulgences with the wah,, eventually coalescing into a bit of a triumphant strut, We need more unserious improvisational music like this.

Slomo Sapiens Bring Their Ominous Heavy Psych and Metal Attack to Brooklyn

Philadelphia power trio Slomo Sapiens play a no-nonsense blend of stoner boogie, doom metal and heavy psychedelia. Their latest limited edition cassette, Slomos Volume 1 is streaming at Bandcamp. They’re bringing their disquieting intensity to a Bushwick gig on April 24 at around 9 PM at Our Wicked Lady. There’s a techy opening act and then a couple of similar acts afterward: none of them are worth seeing. The venue’s webpage says cover is $13.60: it’s probably safe to say that the door person is unlikely to be making change with dimes and nickels, so bring fourteen bucks if you’re going. Things are getting weirder and weirder everywhere we look!

The first track on the album is Sandpounder, a catchy bumpa-bumpa-bumpa fuzztone stoner boogie tune. Frontwoman/guitarist Ceallaigh Corbishley brings surprising angst and nuance to the second track, There’s Nothing More Evil in This World Than Time, shifting from bassist Greg Geiger and drummer Jon Pritchard’s ominous gallop to a toxically swirling ambience and then back.

Slurry hammer-ons, dystopic vocoder sonics and macabre chromatics fuel the next tune, Spook the Prince, up to a dizzying, dissociative rhythmic interweave. Salem is a surreal mashup of twangy surf rock, sludgy slowcore grit and skin-peeling wah-wah riffage. They wind up the cassette (pun intended) with Chi, an echoey sound collage with some tantalizing twin guitar leads half-buried in the mix.

Yet Another Tab of Treats on the Latest Brown Acid Compilation

Every year, in celebration of 4/20, the warped brain trust behind the Brown Acid vinyl compilations release a new volume in the series. The initial concept focused on resurrecting rare heavy psych and proto-metal singles from the late 60s and early 70s. As the years went on, the project grew into a quasi-solstice celebration, twice a year, and began to encompass heavy funk as well as the occasional thrashy, garagey R&B or protest song, which makes sense considering that a lot of this music dates from the Vietnam War era. The brand-new fourteenth volume – streaming at Bandcamp – is a characteristically wide-ranging and entertaining celebration of stoner excess. For whatever reason, this one is somewhat more pop-oriented: Nuggets on Thai stick.

The first track is Fever Games, by Harrisburg, Pennsylvania band the Legends. Stoner boogie gives way to heavy funk in this 1969 Hendrix homage with a devious Little Wing quote – not the one you think – and Iron Butterfly drums.

Detroit duo Mijal & White’s 1974 B-side is a throwback to early heavy British pop bands like the Herd: some excellent extrovert drum work here. The real rediscovered gem on this playlist is Texas band Liquid Blue’s 1969 obscurity Henry Can’t Drive (why can’t he get behind the wheel? Guess).. Lead guitarist Ted Hawley would go on to become an important figure in Texas blues: his slithery multitracks here are exquisite.

The San Francisco Trolley Company were actually a Michigan band, represented by their fierce 1970 original, Signs. With the group’s cheap amps spewing dust-bunny overtones, it stands up strongly alongside the heavier Detroit acts of the era like SRC.

The contribution from West Virginia garage rock project Blue Creed is pretty generic. One of the most obscure but tightest and catchiest tunes here is Play It Cool, Transfer’s slyly shuffling, slightly surfy 1974 shout-out to stoners on the DL. Even less is known about Appletree, whose cowbell-driven single You’re Not The Only Girl (I’m Out To Get) is built around some tightly scrambling lead guitar work.

There’s an interesting blend of Beatles and Hendrix in I’m Tired, by Chicago collar-county area band Cox’s Army. The last song is the Columbus, Ohio crate-digger favorite Raven’s 1975 mostly one-chord jam Raven Mad Blues, a prime example of the extreme hippie self-indulgence the Brown Acid records sometimes descend into. Punk rock was born as an antidote to monstrosities like this – although as a comedic coda to this latest installment, it’s pretty priceless. May there be many more.

Some Killer Rare and Unreleased Sonic Youth Rescued From the Archives

Other than field recordings, is there anything left in the Sonic Youth vault worth hearing that hasn’t already been released? As it turns out. yes, and some of it is prime! It’s a bit of a shock that several of the tracks on the new album In/Out/In – streaming at Bandcamp – haven’t surfaced until now. These rare and previously unreleased cuts date from the final decade of the most influential rock band of the past forty years.

One-chord jams, or close facsimiles, predominate here. In the case of one song, In & Out, a very late-period outtake, it’s amusing to watch SY turn into Yo La Tengo, a band they influenced so profoundly. Over Steve Shelley’s surprisingly muted, galloping rhythm, the guitarists assemble starry, chiming accents amid a warm drone laced with occasional flickers of feedback and Kim Gordon’s breathy, allusive, wordless vocals.

The opening instrumental is a false start: it could be your band, or anyone else’s, hesitatingly jamming out a two-chord Velvets vamp. Social Static, the theme from the Chris Habib/Spencer Tunick film, is a steady, one-note musique concrète mood piece that collapses into loops of feedback, oscillations, pulsing noise and R2D2 in hara-kiri mode: SY at their most industrially ugly but also subtly funny. No spoilers.

Machine, an outtake from The Eternal sessions, is a rare gem: a steady, midtempo stomp bristling with the band’s often-imitated-but-never-duplicated, dissociative close harmonies and layers of gritty textures that grow more assaultive. Why was this left off the album? Space considerations?

Out & In, an epic instrumental workout from 2000 is the real standout here. There’s a wry allusion to the moment The Wonder segues into Hyperstation (arguably the high point of the Daydream Nation album), with signature off-center Thurston Moore raga riffage, and just enough microtonality and clouds of overtones to let the ghosts in under the door. Everything falls away to buzz-and-clang midway through, then they start over with a squall that’s absolutely evil. The band take it out with a stampeding over-the-shoulder nod to Captain Beefheart. This is a must-own for fans and a surprisingly good overview for beginners.

The Spy From Cairo Keeps Making Deliciously Serpentine Middle Eastern Dub Sounds

For more than a decade, one-man band Moreno “Zeb” Visini has been making wildly psychedelic dubwise Middle Eastern dance music under the name The Spy From Cairo. Oud and saz lute are his main axes, but he’s also adept at keyboards, guitar, bass and drums. As usual, he plays everything with expertise and a wry sense of humor on his new vinyl record Animamundi, streaming at Bandcamp.

He was able to record the album in his home country of Italy despite the fascist restrictions which are still in place there, since he does all the music himself with a little transcontinental input from talented vocalists on the web. The central message is freedom. If there are bouncy castles at the rallies in Rome, this is the kind of stuff that freedom fighters (and their kids) could re-energize with. There are a ton of flavors on this record, all held together by lusciously chromatic maqams.

He gets off to a strong start with the title track. a brisk Egyptian reggae tune built around a catchy, scampering, biting oud lead track. Daf frame drum booms in the background, “Information of creation is stored in our DNA,” a rasta explains in the voiceover at the end. No doubt!

Asssembled around a catchy chromatic riff, Beautiful Baraka, featuring Adil Smaali is a chaabi-reggae-rap mashup with a couple of keyboards trading off in a wry call-and-response. Black Sea comes across as a trebly dub plate with wah-wah oud. Visini balances another slithery, catchy oud riff against microtonal roller-rink organ in Cosmic Pasha, then takes a deep plunge into Middle Eastern cumbia in Criminal, with Mambe Rodriguez taking a coy turn on vocals.

Divination has a more enigmatic Balkan-flavored tune, but Visini works anthemic string synth riffs into it. He goes back to a brisk cumbia groove, adding layers of cifteli lute and a scrambling oud solo in Extraterrestre, featuring Andalucian vocalist Carmen Estevez. Hamsa Shuffle has lusciously microtonal violin and a blippy, hypnotic cumbia sway, while Mizmirized has otherworldly zurna oboe and a swaying rai beat.

Visini ripples and pings his way through Qanun in Dub, a reggae tune and one of the most unselfconsciously gorgeous tracks on the record. Seeds of Culture is a loopy Indian-flavored song with snakecharmer ney flute over a rai rhythm and an unexpectedly bristling oud outro (is there such a word as “oudtro?”). The final cut, Ya Wuldani features guests Fatou Gozlan & Duo Darbar and is arguably the most psychedelic, dubwise number. It’s awfully early in the year to be talking about the best albums of 2022, but this is one of them.

An Energetic, Eternally Relevant New Live Album by a Jamband Icon

“One way or another, this darkness has got to give.”

Jerry Garcia led that singalong in concert for the first time in 1970. Working-class Americans were still coming home from Vietnam in body bags, napalm and Agent Orange were being dropped on civilians there, and the violence of the 1968 inner-city riots and the Altamont concert a year later were still fresh in the American consciousness. Garcia’s longtime sparring partner Bob Weir opens with that song on his new vinyl album Live In Colorado with his most recent post-Grateful Dead project, the Wolf Bros., streaming at Soundcloud.

More than half a century later, is there anything left in the tank? On the mic, Weir stretches grittily into a range that Garcia’s tenor reached easily. On the frets, Weir is every bit the magician than he was in the Dead. To call him a rhythm guitarist doesn’t do justice to his distinctive blend of sinewy leads, chordlets and basslines: remember, in the Dead, half of the time Phil Lesh was bounding around way up on his G string.

The band ease their way into the song, New Speedway Boogie. The idea of the Dead with a horn section might strike a lot of people as wretched excess, but the intriguingly assembled quintet of cellist Alex Kelly, trumpeter Brian Switzer, trombonist Adam Theis, violinist Mads Tolling and saxophonist Sheldon Brown supply tight harmonies as pedal steel player Greg Leisz sails overhead, sometimes playing through an icy chorus pedal. Jeff Chimenti shifts from terse, bluesy piano to organ and then back – he’s the Pigpen the Dead never had. Meanwhile, drummer Jay Lane and bassist Don Was maintain a low-key sway while Weir is at his flintiest and most incisive,

The second song is an extended take of Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, another number with immense relevance to 2022. Chimenti and Leisz punch in and out, but the rest of the band chill and let Weir deliver one grim reality after another.

What is the next song, my blue-eyed son? If you dial up this album, try not to cheat and look at the tracklist: it’s impossible to tell. Is it going to be Minglewood, or Brown-Eyed Women? It’s the Dead’s favorite Johnny Cash cover, Big River, Weir taking spiky leads every bit as biting as the ones on hundreds of field recordings. Turning centerstage over to Leisz for some western swing is a perfectly obvious move.

With chorus full on, his chilly, tremoloing lines bring the menace in a slow, utterly noir version of West LA Fadeaway to a blue-neon intensity: this could be the Dream Syndicate. Weir updates a slow, slinky take of the (relatively) rare Dead tune My Brother Esau with a current-day environmentalist reference, then takes his time with the only one of his solo releases here, Only a River, a Shenandoah paraphrase.

The end of the album is where the test of time is most telling. Looks Like Rain was inevitably a high point whenever the Dead played it; this version is surprisingly fast and has neither stormy duel nor picturesque poignancy. The group wind up the album with an equally iconic interlude. Sailor/Saint, in Deadspeak, was the last in a long series of famous diptychs. Part one, Lost Sailor also seems on the fast, uptight side, but the orchestra – if you want to call them that – elevate this brooding tale into fullblown art-rock territory. They do the same, briefly, with Saint of Circumstance: afterward, we get Bobby telling the crowd that they’ll be back for the second set. But these were second-set tunes! Even if you think the Dead died with Jerry – and they did – this is as close to the real thing, in all their shambling glory, as the generation afterward will ever be able to see. Assuming concert restrictions go the way of the dinosaur, as they should, you’ll be able to see Weir on tour later this year.

A Predictably Funny Hit and an Unexpectedly Diverse New Album From Reggae Road Warriors Artikal Sound System

The Artikal Sound System song that everybody knows is You’re an Asshole. It’s the latest in a long, long line of viral commodities to benefit from the music world’s most predictably successful marketing strategy. For those who haven’t yet been exposed, the song is a mashup of roots reggae, corporate urban pop and a famous top 40 hit from the 1960s. And it will leave you laughing.

Artikal Sound System have a predictably good sense of humor and a thing for initials: their latest album, streaming at Soundcloud, is titled Welcome to Florida, These days, that’s even better marketing than ever. They’re basically a reggae group but also take occasional detours into hip-hop, oldschool new wave pop and ska. Frontwoman Logan Rex helps distinguish their sound from the legions of dreadlocked dudes out there.

The album gets off to a false start with Stayed. a mashup of icy 80s new wave electro and neosoul. Firehouse is a trippy, dubby straight-up roots reggae jam: it’s surreal to hear the guys in the band supplying the I-Threes style “she oop oop” backing vocals. That’s Chris Montague on guitar, Fabian Acuña on bass. Christopher Cope on keys and Adam Kamp on drums.

With its catchy blend of woozy synths, Too Soon is a good vehicle for Rex’s coy, chirpy voice. When I Wanna, featuring a stoner rap by Little Stranger, is the opposite of wake-and-bake: Rex explains that she went to bed high since she’d been high all day.

Spiritual Broadcaster is a surprisingly venomous dis at mass media brainwashing: bring it on, Logan! She takes a hard look at the perils of thug life in Cops and Robbers, then the band go back to blippy 80s new wave for Pull Me Close.

The most musically adventurous and most Marley-influenced track is You’re Not There. What’s up with the ringtone that pops into the middle of Happy? A stoner joke? The album’s final cut is Bald Tires. a cheery, determined tune that any touring band can relate to.

The band are on the road in another free state, Texas, right now, with a gig tonight, Feb 11 at around 9 at Scout Bar, 18307 Egret Bay Blvd. in Houston; cover is $20. Joey Harkum, who seems to want to be Zac Brown, opens the night at 8; another good reggae band, the Bumpin Uglies, headline at around 10. Tomorrow night, Feb 12 they move on to Sam’s Burger Joint, 330 E Grayson St. in San Antonio for five bucks less.

Original Heavy, Slow Psychedelic Sounds From Blue Heron

Albuquerque metal band Blue Heron have influences as diverse as Fu Manchu, Kyuss and Acid King, but ultimately they don’t sound like any of the other many stoner metal bands kicking around the desert, metaphorically or otherwise. From their debut single – streaming at Bandcamp – it’s clear they go for slow tempos and let the songs breathe: no wasted notes here.

In the seven-minute A-side, Black Blood of the Earth, the band slowly and imperceptibly bring up the doomy chromatics out of slurry hypnotic riffs as bassist Steve Schmidlapp holds the center and drummer Ricardo Sanchez adds imaginative fills and flourishes. The second part of the song is a slowly drifting heavy psych jam, frontman Jadd Shickler whispering about a “cross-collateralized matrix” and other mysterious things as guitarist Mike Chavez prowls through acid blues.

With growly downtuned bass along with fuzztone and wah-wah grit from Chavez, the B-side, A Sunken Place is closer to Sleep. Fun fact: in addition to fronting the band, Shickler – who back in the day fronted popular mid-zeros stoner metal band Spiritu – runs Blues Funeral Recordings as well as Red Lead PR, devoted exclusively to promoting metal acts. Anyone wondering what his cred is should hear the single: the guy obviously lives for heavy sounds. It’s always tempting to plagiarize his press releases since the invariably nail what a band is all about.

An AC/DC Cover Album Worth Owning?

A lot of people forget that when AC/DC first hit these shores back in the late 70s, they got filed in the punk bins. The difference was that Angus Young was faster than most of the punk lead guitarists. Otherwise, AC/DC songs are easy to play, as anyone who cut their teeth learning this stuff will tell you.

So is there any reason why you would want to own a cover album like the new double vinyl compilation Best of AC/DC [Redux], or spin it at Bandcamp? For one, the bands are killer, and the new versions are surprisingly original. In case anyone is wondering how you might possibly do anything interesting with an AC/DC cover, this is your answer. And while most of the singers on last year’s editions of the Redux cover compilations decided to channel their inner Ozzy, the guys in these bands aren’t trying to be Bon Scott, or Brian Johnson, or…there was another guy after him, right?

Witchskull kick off the album with the prototypical four-on-the-floor riff-rocker Sin City, peaking out with an appropriately unhinged Marcus De Pasquale guitar solo before a sudden bass break. Likewise, Supersuckers’ Overdose takes the over-the-top shredding to the next level of WTF.

Kal-El‘s remake of It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N Roll) is crunchier and sludgier: the organ track is an unexpectedly cool touch, even if it isn’t as insanely ridiculous as Greta Gertler‘s ukulele version. Mos Generator’s Tony Reed teams with Fu Manchu’s Bob Balch to reinvent What’s Next to the Moon as spare, sinister 80s goth rock: who would have thought? Ghost Ship Ritual‘s epic, ornate version of The Razors Edge is just as radical, and arguably the best song on the record.

One of the innumerable funny things about AC/DC is that despite Angus Young’s distaste for Ron Wood’s guitar playing, a lot of early AC/DC is awfully close to Ron Wood-era Stones. And some of those songs are here. But Kryptograf‘s Bad Boy Boogie ends a lot closer to the band’s Highway to Hell peak. And Solace do Whole Lotta Rosie as bad-to-the-bone boogie, with a deliriously good guitar duel out.

Blue Heron play Walk All Over You as Melvins-style sludge. Riff Lord‘s For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) is arguably heavier and a lot more dense than the original. Red Mesa‘s If You Want Blood is the closest thing to the original here – if it ain’t broke, right?

Caustic Casanova‘s take of Dog Eat Dog is closer to X, less over-the-top than the way cult favorite female-fronted New York AC/DC cover band Big Balls would do it. Fueled by drummer Rubin Badillo’s spot-on rolls, Electric Frankenstein play High Voltage as the Dead Boys would have. Domkraft wind up the record with a characteristically bludgeoning take of Night Prowler, AC/DC’s shameless ripoff of the Stones’ Midnight Rambler. All this makes you feel like a kid again: drop the needle and pick up your axe.

Daxma’s New Album: Unlimited Shades of Grey

Bay area band Daxma play hypnotic, melancholy slowcore, akin to a missing link between Godspeed You Black Emperor and My Bloody Valentine. Vocals serve more of an instrumental than lyrical role in this music, such that there are any here. Their new album Unmarked Boxes is streaming at Bandcamp. Other than the occasional screaming guitar burst or tumbling drum riff, the pall never lifts: if grey is your color, this is your sound. Love it or hate it, it’s hard to argue with how accurately this band reflect the past twenty months’ interminable, oppressive gloom.

The first track, The Clouds Parted begins with a broodingly anthemic, looping piano riff, then the guitar crunch kicks in and the dirge is on, but with more of an opaque My Bloody Valentine feel. The band shift gears to a Dark Side of the Moon clang that grows more insistent yet hypnotic as the bass takes over the melody. The MBV cyclotron returns, interchanging with moments of minimalist calm throughout the rest of the song’s almost fourteen minutes. It sets the stage for the rest of the album’s longer tracks.

The second cut is And the Earth Swallowed Our Shadows, rainy-day guitar loops within an increasingly dense fog punctuated by aching washes of tremolo-picking. It ends calmly and stately.

The grey-sky ambience looms closer and closer to the growling bass riff that anchors the epic Hiraeth: as the tableau slowly unfolds, it’s like Mogwai covering the Cure at quarterspeed. Suadade is aptly titled: it’s more sparse, beyond the interlude where the stormclouds come sweeping past.

Anything You Lose begins with one of the album’s catchiest passages, then the melody and textures grow more densely immersive. The final track, Comes Back to Another Form, contrasts the album’s quietest sections with its most raging, sustained peak.